Defining the Capacity Gap in LMT Implementation

Hi, everyone!

It’s the end of September :o

Three months before New Year! Time flies!

Can you recall your resolutions in 2021? Have you achieved some of them?

One of my resolutions this year is to be healthy. No matter how good your plan is, healthy is the key :)

I want to share another target in my 2021 resolutions: I hope I can understand and do LANDMARC works well :D

LANDMARC is a research project to assess land-based mitigation techniques (LMT) for resilient climate pathways. In my daily tasks, I’m working on this project. As you know from my previous blogs, I wrote some blogs about forestry, peatland, waste management, biochar, and agriculture. I was a beginner and didn’t have many experiences in this field. I didn’t have any problems in public speaking, but I couldn’t talk about what I didn’t know. So, I learned a lot from this project. I could understand the differences between 23 land classes in Indonesia, 3R in peatland, intercropping and biochar in agriculture, or what kind of plants in agroforestry. Fourteen months ago, I had to read proposals, reports, and minutes to understand and explain what I should do. During 14 months, outside my daily works, I joined many webinars, discussions, online classes and courses to improve my knowledge in land use. Those help me to understand this project more. I made more effort since I knew I should improve my knowledge. We need to improve 1% every day, right? ;)

This project intends to have an LMT portfolio at national and regional levels, modelling and simulation, and qualitative assessment (risks, co-benefit, trade-offs, climate sensitivity, and others). In the end, we want to assess how LMT implementation can contribute to climate mitigation. There are some deliverables and milestones to achieve all of those things within four years. We started to identify a long-list LMT in each country, make a short-list, collect narratives, assess upscaling scenarios, and do some modelling. To assess upscaling scenarios, we need to identify capacity gaps of national and regional stakeholders and potential benefits, risks, and barriers of LMT implementation at national and regional levels. In the methodology, we started a literature review and interviewed key stakeholders to collect narratives and in-depth assessments through surveys, workshops, and meetings.

In the beginning, I didn’t know where to start. When I drafted long and short lists of LMT implementation in Indonesia, I needed to read many references and ask some groups. After receiving comments and feedback, I understood what information/data/narrative I should include. Especially after having several meetings with stakeholders, I could improve my understanding and knowledge and linkage the literature findings with the actual implementation. In this blog, I want to share one of the activities that I’ve done: identifying the capacity gap in LMT implementation.

There are many definitions of capacity in journals, reports, and ad articles if you’re looking for it. One of them is from UNDP. The UNDP defines capacity as the “[…] the process by which individuals, organisations, institutions and societies develop abilities (individually and collectively) to perform functions, solve problems and set and achieve objectives (Stephen and Triraganon 2009). Another definition came from Fowler et al. (1995): “At its most general, capacity is the capability of an organisation to achieve effectively what it sets out to do.” (Fowler, Goold, and James 1995). In the first paper, capacity is classified into some categories: awareness, understanding, skills, attitudes/aspirations, technology and resources. Another reference is from FAO. They distinguish between functional capacities, technical capacities and three dimensions: technical capacities, functional capacities, and dimensions of stakeholders (enabling environment, individual, and organisation) (FAO, 2010).

Furthermore, in the guideline, we define each indicator and use that definition to do a literature review. For example, the awareness indicator assesses whether the stakeholder is aware of the technology/practice, while the understanding indicator is to know whether the stakeholder understands the complexities of the LMT or not and the main advantages and the main drawbacks. In addition, the skills indicator is to assess whether the stakeholder has the necessary skills to implement the LMT or not, while the attitudes indicator wants to know whether the stakeholder thinks of the LMT benefits and plan. Also, we add other indicators such as finance/economic, implementation (policy), and trade-offs. We also put others if we find other indicators other than those. In this activity, we want to capture the capacity gap of LMT stakeholders. Who are they? They are policymakers, end-user (individual and collective), private sector (companies), NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation)/NPO (Nonprofit Organisation), producer/supplier trade groups (farmer/union representatives), and industry/user trade groups.

The Indonesia case study includes four categories in LMT narratives: forestry, peatland, agriculture (including agroforestry), and soil carbon enhancement - SCE (including anaerobic digestion). BECCS has not been implemented in Indonesia. However, at the regional scale (Southeast Asia), we want to assess these LMTs: BECCS, biochar, agroforestry, afforestation/Reforestation, peatland (wetland) management. We also can add SCE or other agriculture mitigation practices since we can find agriculture areas in all SEA countries. Then, we continued to review relevant references and make summaries. This literature review will be used to draft surveys and other stakeholder engagement activities.

My question is, could you mention three capacity gaps in implementing LMTs in Indonesia (agroforestry, forestry, peatland, or others)? Thank you for reading ^^